landed safely in the new city on a cold but snowless sunday night. the journey to the plane took four easy hours, by bus and by ferryboat. i smoked one roll up cigarette on the boat, drank a hot chocolate, and spoke on the phone to one of my absolute nearest and dearests, one who lives in the place i am leaving, until the boat went through the dead-zone pass where my signal fell dead and did not return.
at the airport the line-up to check in was wonderfully short considering the season, and when i had inched half-way to the front, a voice i’ve known since pubescence called my name behind me and i spun to see another of my nearest and dearests, who happened to be flying into the airport that i was due to fly from, and for the better part of an hour we drank coffee outside on a metal bench and smoked a cigarette each and did our best to excitedly quip and banter our way through a catch-up of the last six months of our lives. when our coffees were drunk and our smokes were smoked, it was time for me to go and my lovely friend walked me to the gate. we hugged and said i love you.
outside i had joked to him about how public transit often makes me despair of the human race, but actually from start to finish the journey was almost wholly filled with friendly, sympathetic creatures. even the boy at security who confiscated four bic lighters from my carry-on was amiable and gentle about the whole business. the woman with the metal detecting wand who had the pleasure of patting my entire self down (more action than i’ve seen in months) and aiding in the removal of my giant boots to check for weapons or bombs i guess, did so with humor and general good spirit. she complimented me on their multi-faceted usefulness.
the flight across country was an exercise in pain: on the way up my right ear buckled under the pressure of our fast ascent and until we came down, some four hours later, i was paralyzed by sharp paroxysms of pain throughout my sinuses, ear canals and even, seemingly, in the most sensitive nerve endings in my brain. there was no relief despite my savage, constant gum chewing and prayers to the universe to make it stop. couldn’t watch anything, couldn’t read anything, sure as hell couldn’t listen to anything; instead i sat hunched forward with my hands against my temples, the brim of my peaked cap pulled low over my wincing features, my legs bouncing in a desperate, unconscious plight to distract my synapses.
my ears are an old, faithful weakness of mine, going back pretty much to infancy. as a little kid i had ear infection after ear infection and finally had several small surgeries, to install tubes in the canals, to remove my adenoids, etc. in recent years their fallibility took on a new and rather more sinister form, and in the last 6 years the drums themselves have ruptured and burst apart in an agonizing, slow, unbearable process that culminates, usually after hours of screaming brutal pain, in a final burst that produces the worst sound i have ever heard, that of my eardrum’s soft and broken tissue tearing audibly, sickly, then all sound is removed and i am as deaf as a baby in a womb.
and so at the best of times i am wary of flights for the precise fear of those little drums giving out and spending the next five hours with no relief. the thought of a crash or terrorist hi-jack or explosion or wing falling off or oxygen failure never even comes across my mind.
i’m thrilled to report that on this flight of all flights, although the pain was terrible, the drums held strong and didn’t burst completely, and as the cabin decompressed with our slow descent into the city, the demon ear in question popped open and corrected again and in that beautiful instant all the pain was disappeared.
and if we are thanking the universe for small favors (as i am often wont to do), i must concede that if the ride was less than comfortable, at least the physical trauma in my canals successfully distracted me from what might have been an unbearably long and neurotic ride, with my heart and head as occupied as they were with this the culmination of the last few months of my life. an end to the aching, yearning frustration of a long distance lover; for on the other side of the frosted glass doors that separate baggage claim from arrivals was not only the glorious path to a life in a city that i have coveted for a long time. not only the tight and familial pack of oldtime friends with whom an existence in the same city limits i have wanted for years. and not only the magnificent scope of possibility that adorns any major physical and emotional move.
of course, i was thrilled to bits about all those things. but through a fantastical, delirious twist of events, also in this new city lives a person who in no time at all crawled into the deepest recesses of my heart and shook me down powerfully with a sweet and honest love the likes of which humbles my every notion of goodness and hope and potential between humans.
and here i am now, two days in, watching the golden set of the winter sun touch down across the glass and copper cityscape that sprawls around the cn tower like lesser giants, from the sheltered stoop of a brick, victorian duplex in the city’s west end. from inside the storm door a large and often ornery cat watches me with his cold, calculating peepers, shining with his dark thoughts as they so often do. and as i walked around in the dazzling, brilliant sunshine today, even the nature of the cold in the air, the smell of winter in this place, was utterly familiar and nostalgic and intoxicating to me. the way the shadows cut long and dark behind the skeletal trees in dufferin park, breaking up the rolling brown grass in sharp dilute.
and it seems to me that if this isn’t happy i don’t know what is.
adieu.
